APOD: A Flight Through the Universe (2012 Aug 13)

[APOD Robot]

A Flight Through the Universe

Explanation: What would it be like to fly through the universe? Possibly the best simulated video of this yet has been composed from recently-released galaxy data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Every spot in the above video is a galaxy containing billions of stars. Many galaxies are part of huge clusters, long filaments, or small groups, while expansive voids nearly absent of galaxies also exist. The movie starts by flying right through a large nearby cluster of galaxies and later circles the SDSS-captured universe at about 2 billion light years (a redshift of about 0.15) from Earth. Analyses of galaxy positions and movements continues to bolster the case that our universe contains not only the bright matter seen, like galaxies, but also a significant amount of unseen dark matter and dark energy.

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[neufer]

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Please remain seated until the Sloan Digital Sky Survey comes to a complete stop.

Check for your personal belongings, and watch your step as you leave.

[shailesh]

I normally like and appreciate almost every photo/video posted in APOD (Thanks to everyone behind the scenes !), I eagerly check it out almost everyday (since last 1 year or so). As for today's (Aug 13th, 2012) video, to be honest, I didn't find this video much exciting at all. There's almost nothing in it except galaxies, galaxies and more galaxies (either individual or in clusters). Nothing else. Not sure if I'm missing some point.

[bystander]

No, I think you got the point. I'm not sure why you didn't appreciate it.

[Beyond]

A nice but very short ride in the Sloan Galaxy class Digital Sky Survey Ship. Starts to give one a bit of a different impression of the universe, when all you are seeing is galaxies, and they look s-o-o-o-o small!! I wonder how fast they were going? Warp 50 ??

[fjv]

(sorry if this is a duplicate - did see it appear after first attempt.)

Wow that video is a lot to take in, i always get dizzy trying to comprehend images containing many light years field of view.

I have a question : Apart from the relativistically impossible feat of travelling around those dimensions, what would it look like ? Considering the distances involved and time taken for light to reach each point of ones travel and maybe the effect of moving at that speed. Nevermind the red shift, there is something paradoxical about traversing those dimensions.

The video moves through a static snapshot of space - but the distances encompassed mean that the objects seen can not remain in the same position and state as when they were 'snapped'. For example background objects that are much further away may not even exist after one has moved through the model towards them due to the millions of (light) years covered.

[stowaway]

Beautiful!!! The sound track was my favorite part...

[Evenstar]

Wow! I still get lost sometimes flying through our Milky Way with a Star Chart. Now I need a Galaxy Chart. Once you start flying through the cosmos which way is 'up'? How would your spaceship navigate so you could return home (if you only could)? Best to stay in the Milky Way. But I've got to wonder with all the likelihood of old intelligent life in our own galaxy, have any of them traveled between galaxies?

If the universe really curves back on itself... (Is that the real relativistic reality with no 'center' and 'no edge'?) ...is this 'flight through the universe' really realistic?

[Evenstar]

(sorry if this is a duplicate - did see it appear after first attempt.)

Wow that video is a lot to take in, i always get dizzy trying to comprehend images containing many light years field of view.

I have a question : Apart from the relativistically impossible feat of travelling around those dimensions, what would it look like ? Considering the distances involved and time taken for light to reach each point of ones travel and maybe the effect of moving at that speed. Nevermind the red shift, there is something paradoxical about traversing those dimensions.

The video moves through a static snapshot of space - but the distances encompassed mean that the objects seen can not remain in the same position and state as when they were 'snapped'. For example background objects that are much further away may not even exist after one has moved through the model towards them due to the millions of (light) years covered.

In a way flying around between galaxies like this really can't happen unless it also plots super novas and clusters forming super clusters and the cosmos accelerating and drifting apart. Best stay in the Milky Way.

[abhagwat]

I wish you had given a destination for the flight - otherwise it looks the same everywhere. Also may be given some names of 'stations' on the way to the destination.

[Ann]

This is a great video. It really demonstrates what it means that the universe has a filamentary structure. It is very obvious from the video that galaxies cluster at different distances with large voids in between.

Ann

[geckzilla]

I normally like and appreciate almost every photo/video posted in APOD (Thanks to everyone behind the scenes !), I eagerly check it out almost everyday (since last 1 year or so). As for today's (Aug 13th, 2012) video, to be honest, I didn't find this video much exciting at all. There's almost nothing in it except galaxies, galaxies and more galaxies (either individual or in clusters). Nothing else. Not sure if I'm missing some point.

Maybe you missed the point of all the other APODs.

[Boomer12k]

Interesting, but needed some "you are here" moments. Or a narrative, stopping at interesting locations, like a super cluster on a filament. Some stops and then turns to get your bearings would have been nice too. Difficult to understand such a random trip. Did not like the large credits at the end. Could have waited until ended and then did it "black screen".
But you get a feel for what is out there...and I appreciate that... I can also appreciate all the WORK that went into making it. Hundreds of billions of galaxies, plotted, with pictures of each one, being typed, (I imagine), into the model, and then the flight animation...that is a monumental task. But, if you could scan the information in, it would cut down on the data entry. Or if you had a prebuilt index of galaxies and locations, most likely these days, that would help auto-plot them. It is still a ginormous amount of work and effort.

:---[===] *

[Boomer12k]

I normally like and appreciate almost every photo/video posted in APOD (Thanks to everyone behind the scenes !), I eagerly check it out almost everyday (since last 1 year or so). As for today's (Aug 13th, 2012) video, to be honest, I didn't find this video much exciting at all. There's almost nothing in it except galaxies, galaxies and more galaxies (either individual or in clusters). Nothing else. Not sure if I'm missing some point.

If you had "wonderment" and "awe" at the scope of what you were watching...you did not miss the point.

And THAT is what the Universe IS at the large scale of things...Galaxies, and Galaxies and more Galaxies of all types, shapes, and sizes...how could there possibly BE SO MANY????? Where did all that ENERGY COME FROM????

Oh, yeah...two undulating membranes in the eleventh dimension...your right...it is underwhelming....

:---[===] *

[ralph]

If there is one APOD I would look at every day, this is it. A stupendous, impossible journey, beyond the dreams of anyone till today... hard to grasp the scale and
wonder of the universe... how many of those galaxies harbour intelligent life producing similar movies... how, why, where dose it all come from...
Just amazing.

[orin stepanek]

Wonderful video! Wow; so many galaxies, and moving through them so fast! Almost like driving through a snowstorm!

[neufer]

<<Vast as this slice of the universe seems, its most distant reach is
to redshift 0.1, corresponding to roughly 1.3 billion light years from Earth.>>

I wonder how fast they were going? Warp 50 ??

~1.3 billion light years in 109 seconds corresponds to Warp 376 trillion.

However, thanks to relativistic time dilation one can actually
travel ~1.3 billion light years in 109 time traveler's seconds
by traveling just one yoctometre per second slower than c.

However, traveling at ultra relativistic speeds
bunches all the photons directly in front of you:

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Apart from the relativistically impossible feat of travelling around those dimensions, what would it look like ? Considering the distances involved and time taken for light to reach each point of ones travel and maybe the effect of moving at that speed. Nevermind the red shift, there is something paradoxical about traversing those dimensions.

The video moves through a static snapshot of space - but the distances encompassed mean that the objects seen can not remain in the same position and state as when they were 'snapped'. For example background objects that are much further away may not even exist after one has moved through the model towards them due to the millions of (light) years covered.

[rstevenson]

In this video, is the per-galaxy scale the same as the distance-between-galaxies scale? It doesn't look right to me. It's like those from-orbit pictures of Mars or other planets where the vertical scale has been exagerated so we can see detail that would otherwise be almost invisible. Compare, for example, with this "map" of our local super cluster...

[click to enlarge]
- from Andrew Colvin's Universe Reference Map

Rob

[moonstruck]

WOW! I got lost

[neufer]

In this video, is the per-galaxy scale the same as the distance-between-galaxies scale?
It doesn't look right to me.

Previous representations are more like cartoons as compared with this careful representation.

[starstruck]

Reminds me of driving through snow flurries on a winter's night; those galaxies are snowflakes in the headlights!

[emc]

WHAT A FUN RIDE!!! Thank you very much!!!

[jayvibe]

Would it be possable to fly after we leave the milky way?IT seems that space filled with a different kind of matter would pervent our traveling through it.Does space time still come into play after we leave the milky way?IT could be like hitting a brick wall! Moveing through the universe could be impossable.

[Chris Peterson]

Would it be possable to fly after we leave the milky way?IT seems that space filled with a different kind of matter would pervent our traveling through it.Does space time still come into play after we leave the milky way?IT could be like hitting a brick wall! Moveing through the universe could be impossable.

There is nothing to suggest spacetime is different outside of galaxies than inside (except that inside it is prevented from expanding because of the high gravitational field). Everything we observe tells us that physics is the same everywhere. Galaxies themselves are moving thought intergalactic space, after all!

[Markus Schwarz]

Would it be possable to fly after we leave the milky way?IT seems that space filled with a different kind of matter would pervent our traveling through it.Does space time still come into play after we leave the milky way?IT could be like hitting a brick wall! Moveing through the universe could be impossable.

If you have a powerful enough engine, I see nothing that prevents you from leaving the Milky Way. Dark matter is still very dilute, compared to densities on Earth (the number I recall is something like 3 Dark Matter particles per glass of beer), and it only interacts via gravity, as far as we know. It's effect is that your engine would have to be much more powerful, since you would have to overcome not only the gravitational pull of all stars that you see, but of the Dark Matter as well.

Spacetime certainly exists beyond our Milky Way and there is no "barrier" you hear of in science fiction. In fact, we have good evidence that part of the cosmic rays hitting Earth all day do indeed originate from outside our own galaxy.